Flash Partay

Was asked to take shots at a friend's 21st the other week. So thought it would be a good time to practice more umbrella work and more off camera lighting (mostly bounce) techniques.

so  armed with the entire kit (and 30 AAs to spare)...

I had a bit of a plan in mind for how the evening would go in terms of the pictures that I was going to take. First off I would arrive early, take a few informal portrait style(ish) photos using the umbrellas. Turns out the house had a very nice red-maroon painted wall, which served very well as a good backdrop.

I lit to roughly f5.6 as I wanted some loss of detail in the background sometimes, but in hindsight I probably should have lifted it to f8ish as I feel the depth of field was a bit too shallow still.

I played around with the shutter a bit. I mainly kept it at around 1/100th of a second. It wouldn't have made much of a difference due to the speed lights being the main light, although I did drop it sometimes for whenever I wanted the lamp in the background so that it could burn in. Unfortunately it turned out to look a little out of place in the end.

One of the major things that I wanted to do was to ban on camera flash on this night as I wanted the photos to have a real depth to them - but in a way that I could completely control it (cause as we all know I am a real  lazy bum control freak)

I used two umbrellas roughly at 1/8th or 1/16th power and positioned them at roughly 45 degrees left and right, then I lowered the left umbrella until I was happy with it. I figured this would help reduce the shadows that would form underneath and what can I say - they're youthful AND have very photogenic skin so no highlights of wrinkles and skin tones came out well : )   However it is a point that I forgot later on when I lit some people WITH MORE LIFE EXPERIENCE from the bottom : (

I also didn't light the background separately as i liked the light falloff that was happening on it. However yet again with me and my stupidity - when I took the art piece off the wall, I left the brass hook behind - so therefore for roughly 40% of the bare reddish background pics I had to Photoshop the hook out (The other times I had positioned one of the girl's heads to obscure it). Besides this its all in camera (Thumbs up for improved lighting)  :D

After a bit I was trying my best to think of a way to alter the 1 expressive smile in the photos. I really wanted some natural looking pictures, you know - something that shows a bit of the subjects character. Thankfully katie was in the group to help with that. She really helped to diversify the expressions and came out with a few pretty cool expressions. Also I suggested a couple of poses and the girls really got into it.

And then out came the straws - which I felt really helped with getting the girls to be more themselves in front of the camera. It made some really cool shots

 After we finished with these shots I thought of using the scenery in the backyard for a few shots as well. They suggested closer to the trees so I used a 2 light setup. 1 directional camera left - pointed towards the middle of the camera and bounced the light to the right off the (white) ceiling fo fill. Pretty much used the same shutter speed here too. The thing that  I really like about off camera manual flash is the repeatability of the result. If I had lit using on camera TTL..... lets just say it would've been a very 2D world :S

In this one below you can see the light to the left 

Then I played around with lighting the table - slowed the shutter to 1/30th or even 1/20th i think in order to include the light from the flame. 

Then used the umbrellas again in the marque

And then it came to the family shot. I have learned so much from this one experience. Inevitably it got a bit chaotic.

 One thing that I should have said first up before the shot was to say that if both their eyes can't see my camera then move or adjust or say something - but hey never ventured never known

And so the rest was pretty much bounce flash and perspective.

The cake had something to say too - which was a surprise:

And again I slowed down the shutter to 1/30th roughly to get the flames from the sparklers.

The major thing here that I was really chuffed about - I didn't NEED to do the usual brightness/contrast/saturation thing that I normally do to tweak the photos - with the exception of getting rid of that hook in the background (another lesson learned - Take the hook off the wall!)

I really do hope that Carmen enjoyed her night and that she is as (if not more) happy as I am with the pics.

Maybe I am starting to learn a few things about photography after all...

Az